She's also increasingly attached to her two employees: Claudia Modjeski -- freakishly tall, forty-odd years old -- who might finally be undone by the extreme loneliness that's dogged her all of her life; and Rebekah Shook, pushing thirty, still living in her fervently religious father's home, and carrying the child of the man who recently broke her heart.

I got out the forty-odd dollars, paid him, gave him a tip, and then said an enthusiastic good-byehappy to know there was at least one person in Washington, D.C., and a Chinese man at that, who knew who Joseph Needham was.